Mixture

[Nathan Yospe]

On Mon, 31 Mar 1997 claw at null.net wrote:

:On 29/03/97 at 08:22 PM, "Jon A. Lambert" <jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com>
:said: >> On 27/03/97 at 10:27 PM, Adam Wiggins <nightfall at inficad.com>

:>There are others who demand an 
:>intelligence stat in order to effectively roleplay their character to
:>the point  where they will intentionally overlook what may be obvious
:>courses of action from a player perspective.  
:
:In which case I see nothing to prevent them from dreaming up their own
:intelligence stat and diddling with it as they chose.  Why the game
:has to be involved is beyond me.

It shouldn't. The game should never assume that it knows your character's
mind better than you. It may, however, know your character's perceptions.

:>I have seen this stat
:>broken out into as many as 4 different stats in some games or not
:>used at all.
:
:There are some break-outs which I do like.  The definition of
:intelligence I really dislike to binding in MUDs is "the ability to
:pose and resolve problems relating to survival."  Visual accuity,
:perception, will power, all that stuff, sure, it could be in the game
:as its very easy for the game to enforce it via the IOs it sends the
:player, the interactions it allows -- just not the above definition. 
:Having the game enforce choice of action is counter to the whole flow.

Some fun ones: perception modification not only of what you can see, but
of what you see _emotionally_ (IE: Big ugly skinny pale guy to a dwarf ==
beautiful graceful being to a human == your brother joe to an elf) This
can go either way, depending on implementation. Damn hard to do, though.
What else? Ah. Natural behavior of your Character that you have to
explicitly _forbid_... (IE: your character, Grungo the Giant, cannot help
the urge to maim, mangle, and run amuck. When you start to shift uneasilly
from foot to foot and see flashes of red and visions of the peaceful
villiage beneath you smashed and squashed and smushed, you have to calm
down... not an easy task for a giant.)

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Nathan F. Yospe - University of Hawaii Dept of Physics - yospe at hawaii.edu